"Covers not only the chronologically earliest period in the book but also the most extensive timespan of any part of the anthology: the first text dates from c.1204, the latest from c.1690. With the exception, however, of the first four texts, which form a chronologically separate cluster, all the rest date from the mid-fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century, a period of approximately 250 years. In the arts, this includes the Renaissance as well as the later founding of the French Academie Royale, and with it, the inception of the academic system which not only dominated French art for the next two hundred years but also provided the model that fundamentally shaped art practice throughout Europe. In a broader perspective the timespan also covers the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Age of Exploration and the seventeenth-century 'scientific revolution'. By any standards, that amounts to a world-historical epoch, and although the existing volumes of Art in Theory do not encompass Renaissance art theory (precisely because it was felt to constitute a subject distinct from our concern with the modern period and its academic predecessor), the present anthology of necessity does seek to address this period of Europe's earliest encounters - since antiquity."-- Provided by publisher.